Better Than Nothing
by Orm
Summary: Axel thinks he is fortunate. He isn't. Axel & Roxas, gen.


_Wrote this on holiday in France, procrastinated forever over posting it, still not sure if I really like it or if I really don't like it. Apparently there's only so long I can be in a fandom before I start writing fics like this._

_Anyway, here. Axel & Roxas, gen, longer than I usually write but still not that long._

•

It's a sunny day in Paris, the cathedral is on fire, and there are Heartless again. Axel remembers being scared the first time he saw one – he was just a kid, then, and he managed to get away. He was sure he'd seen a devil, and even though his maman beat him for telling lies, he kept a frightened watch for it every night afterwards for a long time. He was old enough to think he'd imagined it after all by the time he saw one again, but his fear didn't last very long that time – mostly because when it took his heart, it took away his ability to be scared at all. He likes thinking back on it, even though it hurts in the empty space in his chest. Visiting his memories makes him feel that little bit more human. It's not like Axel entertains any kind of denial about what he is, but it's a nice feeling.

Almost as nice as the way the flames are licking up the sides of Notre Dame. He and Roxas are sitting on a roof, watching; there's a struggle going on there, gargoylelike Heartless swooping about the cathedral and civilians screaming. And a great big fire. It makes Axel smile.

"Do you mind watching it burn?" Roxas asks suddenly, and when Axel looks at him, puzzled, Roxas is looking straight back. There's a moment of silence, and when Axel doesn't answer, Roxas says, "You used to live here, didn't you?"

"... Yeah, maybe." Axel doesn't frown. He's not so much bothered by the fact that Roxas knows as he is puzzled that Roxas noticed without being told. "How'd you guess, Sherlock?" he says, and he's genuinely curious, because it's not as if Roxas has his own experiences to compare it to. They went to Destiny Islands once. Roxas got sunburn on his nose and complained about the food, and there wasn't the slightest scintilla of recognition.

"We come here a lot," says Roxas. It sounds like he's had to think about it, like this is just one of the reasons he's noted. "It's not the kind of place I'd've thought you'd like."

Axel looks at him curiously for a moment, and then he laughs. "It's better on fire!" he declares, tossing a roof tile at a Shadow. The tile catches light halfway through its trajectory, and Roxas watches as the flames engulf the Heartless before he looks back at his friend, a hint of a smile on his face.

"You really think so?"

"Yeah." Axel throws another tile. "It's pretty much boring, most of the time. Their idea of fun here is kinda ..." He makes a vague, undescriptive gesture, reaching in the air for the right word, "... kinda centered on capering." He pauses, and frowns, and adds, "And burning people, but not in the fun way."

Roxas takes this in, considering – looking straight ahead of him and thinking, rather than watching Axel for a reaction – and then says, "But we come here a lot." The smile's back, amused: but you do like it, don't you. As if Roxas finds that endearing.

Axel frowns, leaning back on the palm of one hand, watching the city burn. At last he shrugs, looks at Roxas, smiles, and says, "I like the food." In return, he gets a skeptical look, one of the ones that reminds him that Roxas has grown up a lot in the last year. Sure, it's still pretty easy for Axel to pull the wool over those bright blue eyes, but they're not innocent any more, and challenging cynicism has replaced wary caution when it comes to things Roxas is reluctant to believe. Axel makes a show of sighing, although there's still a smile on his face, and shrugs again. "The food and the memories."

"Right." Roxas means, that's what I thought, but he probably doesn't want to outright admit pressing a question he knew the answer to – and on the other hand, if Axel knows Roxas, which he does, he also probably doesn't want to suggest he didn't know it. Roxas is stupid like that, and knowing that in anyone else it'd be annoying doesn't stop Axel's fond chuckle.

"It doesn't matter if it's on fire or not," he explains. "I mean, it kind of does, most things are more fun once you set them on fire, but I mean ... I'm never here for now." He pauses, running his gloved thumb over a crack in the tile he's holding, and smirks. "Well ... now I'm here for now. But only because it's on fire. Normally ..." Axel shrugs. "I don't care what happens to this place. That's not why I come here. I'm here for when I did care."

It's more than Axel would have told most other members of the Organization unless he was pretty much sure that they did the same thing. Roxas doesn't do it, of course, but perhaps that's why it's okay to tell him – there's no way he could possibly understand. Roxas will never know what it's like to care about a place, to cherish happy memories. For him, real happiness and genuine caring aren't even memories, they're abstract concepts beyond his grasp.

Axel can't imagine what that must be like, so when Roxas doesn't reply, he lets the silence lie for a while before he changes the subject, and the next time Axel goes back to Paris, he doesn't take Roxas with him.

•

"Here or Twilight Town?"

"Huh?"

Axel swallows the mouthful of food he's eating and tries again. "Where do you feel more at home? Here, or Twilight Town?"

Roxas frowns. "Here. Why?"

"Just wondering," Axel replies. He's a little surprised. "How come? I always thought Twilight Town was way nicer."

"It is. You didn't ask which one I _liked_ more. Twilight Town has better views. And it's not so ..." Roxas looks up at the lifeless sky of The World That Never Was, and shrugs.

"Not so ...?" Axel prompts, smirking. He knows that Roxas is just trying to avoid saying _dark_: he knows Roxas's elemental affinity for light gives him an aversion to darkness in the same way he himself dislikes the cold, and he knows Roxas goes out of his way to make like the dark is his friend because he thinks not liking it would make him a sissy.

"_Cold_," says Roxas, giving Axel a pointed frown. "The weather's better."

"The World That Never Was doesn't _have_ weather," Axel points out.

"Exactly."

Axel scratches his cheek, casting a glance round the skyscrapers around them. Despite the lights it's dark and cold and empty, lit up like a bustling city but utterly devoid of life. If he was more human, Axel thinks, it'd be _creepy_. "So what's to love?" He sure can't think of anything.

Roxas doesn't reply until he's finished chewing, in the pointed kind of way he has that says _at least _I've_ got manners_. "Nothing," he says at last. "It's ours."

Axel stares out at the city for a moment or two, reflecting on that. "Sheesh ... _that's_ depressing."

Roxas shrugs. "You asked."

"Guess I oughtta know better, huh?" Axel says with a laugh that's almost a sigh.

"Well, it's true. I _like_ going other worlds, to visit, but they all belong to other people." Roxas is fiddling with the empty packaging from his meat bun. Roxas doesn't fidget much, his movements are normally very controlled, and Axel knows this means there's something on his mind that he's reluctant to say – so he waits. Eventually Roxas continues, a little more slowly and carefully than usual. "One day ... I'd like to find a world where no-one else lives ... with better weather and better views. Y'know. Somewhere ... better than here, that doesn't belong to anyone else."

Axel smiles at the faintly wistful look on Roxas's face, and shakes his head. "Heart first, then you can start thinking about stuff like that."

To his surprise, Roxas frowns at that. It's like what Axel said flicked some kind of angry switch that was waiting to be turned on. "That's all anyone here ever thinks about, isn't it?" he says after a moment or two, quiet and annoyed. "What if there's things I want to _do_ besides _get myself a heart_?"

Axel stares at him. He's not totally sure he understands. Roxas says _get myself a heart_ as though it's a stupid, pointless goal, like it wouldn't solve anything. He _knows_ Roxas feels the emptiness the same as the rest of them. He knows they all feel it just as bad. Suddenly Roxas is baffling him, and to Axel that's totally alien. "What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe I don't even want a heart in the first place," says Roxas, as if he's challenging Axel to tell him he needs it. "I'm _fine the way I am_. I've got – I've got _better_ things to do. Having a heart isn't going to answer all my questions. It's not going to solve all my problems. Is it?"

"It'd _make things better_," Axel insists, because if there's one thing he knows, it's that. "Trust me, Roxas, if you could remember, you –" He stops. _Oh_. If Roxas could remember ...

"Yeah," Roxas says. He must be able to see the realisation dawn on Axel's face. "I wouldn't know."

Axel sighs, resting his chin in his hand. "Yeah. I guess you wouldn't."

"Yeah, well. Maybe it's better that way."

Axel shakes his head. For all that he's good at accepting his lot and moving on, he wouldn't swap his memories for all the worlds. "Seriously, kid. You don't know what you're missing."

Roxas says nothing. It doesn't come up again, because Axel makes sure to avoid the subject – it bothers him to hear his best friend discredit the only thing that comes anywhere close, for him, to hope. He doesn't think about it too much, and reminds himself, over and over, that he's lucky to have his memories.

•

Then Roxas leaves.

Something in Axel wants to go with him, but he knows he can't do that. Leaving the Organization would be leaving the only remote chance he has to get his heart back, and the very idea of letting go of that hope, however small it might be, feels like giving up altogether.

He tells Roxas, you can't turn your back on the Organization, and means, you can't turn your back on what we all need. You can't turn your back on _me_.

But Roxas can, and does, and it's like he's turned around and spat on Axel's hope. Axel's angry, for a while, or what passes for angry among Nobodies, but by the time he's been ordered to retrieve Roxas, he just misses him.

He tries everything he can, his careful composure steadily fleeing him all the while, but nothing works, even when he stops carrying out orders.

When he realises he's set goals of his own above those of the Organization, he thinks of all the things that Roxas wanted to do and find out, things he didn't want to put off just because he'd been told he was nobody, and he'll never be able to, now.

He knows that if he hadn't been so desperate to cling to what hope that he had, he could have changed this. Could have gone with Roxas, helped him find somewhere that didn't belong to anyone else. Maybe even given him some of his answers.

He knows, when he meets Sora again, that Roxas really was someone else – there's something in Sora's eyes that almost matches the innocence Roxas used to have a long time ago, but Sora's not someone Roxas used to be the same way Axel used to be a gypsy thief. He's just ... Sora, and Roxas isn't there any more.

Axel knows that if he tried to make a heart deal with this, it would break.

He thought he knew Roxas inside out, that what made them different gave him the distance he needed to analyse Roxas objectively, but in the end it just meant it took him too long to understand the most fundamental difference between them. Roxas never yearned for his heart because he never knew what it was like. He didn't need to think he'd get it back. He didn't need the Organization.

It turned out Axel didn't, either; not as much as he needed his best friend. And he was never objective about Roxas, anyway.

And maybe Roxas was the lucky one after all.


End file.
